The Tears of Edgli had made Hanald an economic powerhouse.[4] The dyes that they produced were vibrant and prized throughout Nalthis. However, the Tears could only grow in Hanald's climate. Other nations were jealous and wished to take control of Hanald so they could profit from the dyes.[2]

The process of AwakeningLifeless had already been developed before the Manywar. However, the Commands that had been known previously required fifty Breaths to create a single Lifeless.[2] This arrested the ability for large amounts of Lifeless troops to be used in combat, it was simply too costly.

However, one of the Five Scholars, Shashara, was spurred by Yesteel's development of ichor-alcohol into making a new discovery.[5] She invented a Command that allowed for the creation of a Lifeless with a single Breath.[2] Together these discoveries allowed rulers to effectively double the size of their armies;[6] along with the fact that the new troops did not eat, take pay, or feel pain and fear.[2] Larger standing armies could be created. This made the Manywar the first conflict on Nalthis to utilize Lifeless in great numbers.[7] Powerful Awakeners and siege engines such as ropes Awakened to throw boulders would also be used in combat.[5][8] The power disparity between those with the new Lifeless Command and those without was another cause of the Manywar.[9]

New Commands were also being discovered rapidly, a golden age of Awakening took place, due in part to the Five Scholars.[2] These new discoveries helped further learning and knowledge, but they also provided dangerous weapons. The House of Idris, ruling family of Hanald, were particularly interested in Awakening, and gained powerful Awakeners and Lifeless.

At that point, one of the Returned had a vision of war.[2] This ended up being the catalyst for the war, it prompted Vasher, called Strifelover, to preemptively strike against the other nations before they attacked him.

After his fellow Returned had a vision of war, Vasher, then known as Talaxin or Kalad, used his knowledge of BioChroma and Awakening to raise up a vast army.[10] In the beginning, it seems the House of Idris made Vasher their general.[2] However, he used this army, and the Royal family's own Awakeners and Lifeless, as well as a revolt of the people, to seize control of Hanald from them. The family promptly fled T'Telir. Vasher also began developing a new type of Lifeless, later known as Kalad's Phantoms,[11] made from bone encased in stone. These troops were among the most powerful of Lifeless and formed the core of his army.[2] At some point, a few other nations including Pahn Kahl and likely Tedradel united to form the Pahn Unity, to oppose Hanald and Vasher.[7]

As the Manywar began, the Five Scholars each seemed to go their own way.[2] It appears likely that Vasher and Shashara, as husband and wife, remained on the same side. It is also likely that the brothers, Arsteel and Yesteel also stayed together. Denth began the war attempting to make peace, but eventually joined Vasher's side.[12] The split of the Five Scholars gave the various nations in the Manywar access to different Awakening knowledge and techniques that the other nations did not have access to.[2]

Working together, Vasher and Shashara successfully managed to develop Nightblood, a Type IV Biochromatic Entity.[5] Patterned after Shardblades that Vasher had seen on a visit to the planet Roshar, Nightblood was designed to be a similarly destructive weapon.[13] Through a complex and experimental process they created a sentient sword with a Command to destroy evil. Unfortunately, as a sword, Nightblood had no concept of the difference between good and evil, and so could be used to wreak great destruction.

The battle of Twilight Falls was the final engagement of the Manywar.[7] It was the only battle of the Manywar where Nightblood was used in the battle.[14] The sheer number of casualties caused by Shashara wielding Nightblood was devastating. Over the course of the battle the leader of the Pahn Unity, the coalition of nations against Hanald, was killed.[7]

Vasher was horrified by the destruction caused by the use of Nightblood.[14] Shashara planned on revealing the secrets of how to create Type IV Biochromatic Entities to the rest of Nalthis. Vasher decided that he couldn't allow that to occur, he couldn't allow other Awakened swords to become available to other nations. He and Shashara argued about it, and he ended up murdering her with Nightblood to stop her.[15] Furious at the death of his sister, Denth defected from Vasher's side and never forgave him for it.[12]

At some point during the war, Vasher grew sick of battle and war, possibly due to what he saw Nightblood do in battle. He decided to end the Manywar by returning his Phantoms from battle to Hallandren. He took control of his own nation in an effort to end the fighting, which ended up being successful.[16] The threat of his armies was enough to frighten the all of the nations into ending the war.[17] He was then called Peacegiver by the Hallandren who could not understand why he had ended the war.[16] Vasher then Commanded the Lifeless to stay put like statues, a gift for the city,[17] leaving them Invested with enough Breath to hold their shape, but not to move.[18] While the end of the war came soon enough to save most of the nations involved, Kuth and Huth, main enemies of Hanald in the Manywar,[16] were not so lucky and collapsed.[2]

Vasher also gave up the majority of his Breaths, around fifty thousand or so[19] that he had collected during the course of the Manywar.[11] Vasher endowed them on a priest, likely of the Cult of the Returned, and told him to keep them safe for him, in the event they should ever be needed.[17] This man became the first God King.[2]

After the House of Idris and its servants fled T'Telir, they moved to the northern highlands of Hanald.[20] They established a kingdom there, named Idris after the family. The Idrians, who had previously experimented with Awakening, turned their backs on the art as a whole.[9] The Idrians brought their religion, Austrism, with them. They used its tenets to make Awakening sound immoral and evil. This fear of Awakening impacted Idrians greatly, their culture was in fact shaped by it. Many superstitions grew up around Awakening.[21] For example, Idrians always wore drab colors, such as black, white, or tans, so Awakeners could not use that color.[22] However, this was not true, an Awakener could use those colors anyway. It was a symbolic gesture. Idrians, for the most part, were totally ignorant about the way Awakening worked, due to their insulation from it.

In the wake of the Idrian Royal family's departure, and Vasher's step down from military dictatorship, the Cult of the Returned took control of the new nation, naming it Hallandren.[2] Their religion eventually evolved into the Iridescent Tones, became the norm within Hallandren's territory. The only notable exception was in Pahn Kahl, which was absorbed into the new nation of Hallandren as a province.[23] They retained their own religion and culture.[24] The conclusion of the Manywar was also the foundation for Hallandren's power in the region of the Bright Sea in the modern post-war era.[25]

Over time, the specifics of Kalad's Phantoms were forgotten and they became known as the D'Denir,[17] statues that had been a gift from Peacegiver as a memorial to the thousands killed[1] in the Manywar,[26] as well as a reminder them to avoid going to war.[16] The memory of the monstrous Lifeless remained though, as both a curse[27] and a myth.[2] Sometimes youths would search the jungles trying to find the Phantoms, to no avail.[28]

While the war itself was over, the tensions between the nations never fully vanished. Tedradel's hatred of Hallandren, in particular, would remain strong well over three centuries later.[20] Pahn Kahl too hated Hallandren. They wished to regain their status as an autonomous power.[23] They hatched a plan to get Idris and Hallandren to go to war with one another, so Pahn Kahl could declare its independence in the confusion. This obsession with revenge eventually ended up destroying what remained of Pahn Kahl's culture.[24]

Idris and Hallandren would keep an uneasy peace for the next three hundred years. Since the Royals took the blood of Vo, the first Returned, with them, they had a legitimate claim to the throne of T'Telir, a worry to many Hallandren.[2] Hallandren still considered the Idrians to be rebel province within the borders of their nation.[29] In addition to old hatreds, Idris controlled mountain passes that allowed trade routes to nations in the north, as well as copper mines. Hallandren was enraged by this, and often felt that the tariffs charged by the Idrians were too high.[1]

Eventually, about twenty years before the Pahn Kahl rebellion, King Dedelin of Idris and Susebron of Hallandren arranged a treaty where Dedelin would send one of his daughters to marry the God King, in hopes of forestalling war and easing the rising tensions between the two nations.[20] The daughter would reintroduce the blood of the First Returned to the lineage of Hallandren, reinforcing the God King's claim on the throne. The promise of this daughter kept Hallandren aggression towards Idris at a minimum, at least until they got their bride.